


On the Precipice

by AbelQuartz



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Aliens, Cunnilingus, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fear of Heights, Hair, Long Hair, Nudity, Post-Coital Cuddling, Public Nudity, Relationship(s), stretch marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:01:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26505592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbelQuartz/pseuds/AbelQuartz
Summary: Greg’s having an okay time right now. He’s eating okay, he’s living just fine, the van’s working nicely, but his magical space goddess girlfriend doesn’t seem to be taking him very seriously. It’s possible she doesn’t take anything he does seriously, no matter how hard he tries. Is there something wrong with him? Is there something wrong with her? Is there something irreconcilably wrong between them both?Greg’s having a less-than-okay time right now.
Relationships: Rose Quartz & Greg Universe, Rose Quartz/Greg Universe
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	On the Precipice

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place before "We Need to Talk" and "Greg the Babysitter."
> 
> While not pornographic in nature, this story features explicit sexual imagery and depictions of sex acts. Please use your own judgement.
> 
> A work for anonymous.

But it  _ felt _ like skin. She didn’t sweat, not really. From what Greg could tell, she made water emerge from her body, gave it a gentle saltiness, like the sea without brine, like stock without seasoning. It made her curves look like polished stone in a way he could never have imagined, glazed pottery moving in waves. Tiny grooves in her hips and stomach took the place of cellulite. Maybe she picked them up from a human, thinking they were beautiful. They  _ were _ beautiful.

Blankets kept them off the grass, keeping dirt out of anywhere they didn’t want dirt to be. That was mostly on Greg. Rose accepted the softness, and loved to feel out the blankets and trace her fingers along the woven patterns before resting on them. It had been a windless day, so no need for rocks to weigh them down. The setting sun was trapped behind reddening clouds, dark enough so that they didn’t have to hide from prying eyes.

Greg finally felt his body coming back down from its high. Rose could be loud, but loud in a way that only reached his ears. He knew how her voice could reach across town, across the beach, even over the roughest seas. She was powerful in that way, and in more private ways, strong ways, the kind that kept him in tight even after they had both finished.

The man let himself rest. He groaned as he flopped down onto Rose’s body. Actual sweat, genuine exertion, rolled off his back and down to the blankets. With her body facing up to the sky, Rose released her partner and let her arms flop down above her head. Her legs rolled and curled and pulled Greg close regardless, pressing into the back of his thighs.

“You worked so hard,” she murmured, turning her head so a curl fell out of her face, “and you saved up for me, didn’t you.”

“Heh, well...whoof. Yeah, that’s just how I’m made.”

“Made! Ha, made.”

The word, she was laughing at the word. Was it because he said it, or because of what it meant? Rose wouldn’t know how things like sausages or vans were made, but she knew that there was an amount of effort that went into creation, energy expended. She had just said he worked hard. But that wasn’t making, that wasn’t creation.

Greg turned his head to the side. The edge of Rose’s breast obscured his vision. When he laid on top of her with their hips together, his face reached up to where her sternum would be. That was the more chilling part of it all. Underneath the soft tissue, there was no skeleton to be found. Parts of her were more solid to accommodate what gravity exerted on them, but the inner workings of her body were a mystery.

Eavesdropping upon the Gems’ conversations had led Greg to believe that they thought their bodies were made of light. Well, that couldn’t be entirely true. As he wrapped his arms around Rose’s torso, she felt solid, she felt dripping, she had a smell. The man pulled back onto his aching knees and looked over Rose’s whole body, down to where they connected, down inside of her.

Her false sweat wasn’t the only wetness. Greg huffed as he pulled his hips back and let the folds twist around him, moving in an almost prehensile fashion. Flesh didn’t move like that. Light also didn’t move like that. He had to admit, it was hot. Rose kept herself spread for him, propping her feet against the blanket and looking down over her own body with a raised eyebrow and a barely concealed smile.

He couldn’t help himself. Rose watched carefully as Greg lowered his head down. She practically squealed with delight as his tongue ran up from the bottom to the top, gently breaking the skin, as it were. His own taste was mixed in with Rose’s arousal — not unpleasant, but not his usual fare. The stimulation was what mattered, if briefly. She tasted so different than any woman he had been with, from his first college hookup to the last girl he had talked to on tour. 

A slight saltiness tinged the folds, along the pinkness inside. His hands spread her apart gently, pressing like clay. Greg had noticed before, but he didn’t want to say, that the soft pink curls around her manufactured genitals were both far more conditioned than anything a human woman would have, and they didn’t appear to have follicles. Each individual hair emerged from her body on its own accord. It made sense, considering Gems had no sweat, no pores, no skin trouble or need for feminine hygiene products.

As he drew back his face and swallowed, Greg studied Rose’s body. There was only one orifice, which surprisingly wasn’t an issue. Thinking about the food they ate together could be saved for another time. The labial folds rested along her body, waves of perfect skin. Her clit was almost like a literal pearl underneath the hood. The tiny ringlets that surrounded it made it feel like a perfect facsimile of a vagina with something truly and completely alien. Well, it was alien, literally. Greg knew he was staring, but thankfully, Rose was one of the few people in the universe who didn’t mind. She just stared back.

This was not the first time they had had sex, nor was it the first time that Greg had found himself wondering about Rose’s body and how it functioned. She had humanoid arms and legs, a humanoid set of perfect breasts, a tight and perfect humanoid pussy to top it all off. He could remember the faces or the names of the people he had slept with before, but he also remembered what he thought after. Every time, every body, he imagined if there was a future with them. And every time he had to say goodbye. He couldn’t say goodbye to Rose like that. He hadn’t had to study the bodies of his partners, wonder how they functioned, wonder if he could keep up with it all. She pretended as if it would go on forever, a perpetual motion of human and light, a childish way of rewinding and replaying that she could do for as long as Greg had the energy.

“I love you,” Greg murmured.

He did. Didn’t he? He had been in Beach City for a couple months now, and he couldn’t imagine leaving to go anywhere else. Greg looked at the woman staring at him, wide dark eyes like a newborn seal pup. She sat up on the blanket, pushing herself into a sitting position as she let her legs fall. Greg scooted closer, shuffling against the fabric.

“You are so adorable!” Rose murmured. It was the same tone of voice that Greg had heard her use for hermit crabs and discolored leaflets on telephone poles. “Turn around, I want to play with your hair.”

Greg stopped and opened his mouth to protest, but there was nothing else to say. Rose clasped her hands together in anticipation. She could wait for hours for sunsets, or the changing tide, or for Greg to wake up from a nap. She loved it all, or so it seemed. The man sighed in defeat as he turned his body and sat between his lover’s legs. Rose squealed and ran her hands up his neck, tugging gently at his mane.

Something was wrong with her, besides the obvious. Or no, being an alien wasn’t wrong, but there was an inherent wrongness to them being together, considering they were different species entirely. It was so strange to consider that fact and to still be with her. And to have sex with her. But it wasn’t her first time, and it wasn’t her body. That was the strangest thing about Rose that Greg knew about. As far as he could tell, there was no need for aliens to have mammaries and uteruses and all that anatomy. The other Gems didn’t have any of those, but they had eyes and hands where humans usually did. What parts were human, and what parts were Gem? 

As he had laid on her stomach, though, he knew that the actual gemstone part was part of her. Everyone seemed to have one, and Garnet even had two for some reason. Maybe it was some sort of secret royalty thing, or that’s where their life force was made. Greg knew he couldn’t ask too many questions, and even if he did, Rose wouldn’t answer them directly.

She was too busy anyway, humming one of his songs as she ran her fingers through his messy mane. One brush in the morning couldn’t last a day, but even as she un-knotted the tangles, it didn’t really hurt for some reason. Maybe she loved it, but maybe she didn’t love at all. Greg shuddered as the first-year philosophy course he had taken reared its ugly head. Maybe Rose was just a facsimile, a Chinese room of emotions through which she expressed love and physical reaction and all other kinds of humanoid aspects. But that couldn’t be. She was her own person, just like him. Every part of every word she said was tantamount to meaning. Wasn’t it?

“Did you hear what I said?” Greg murmured, covering his sticky groin with both hands.

“You said that you love me!”

Great, she had heard that, and had responded accordingly. It felt pathetic to follow up. If there was something else he could do, though, he had no idea. The man looked out over the town far below.

“Well, do you love me too?”

“Greg, of course I do!” she murmured. “I love you! I love all human beings, you know that.”

“No — I mean, me specifically. Like…”

She wouldn’t even understand if he explained it. Or worse, she understood already and she was avoiding it. But Rose had always told the truth so far, and if she didn’t want to say something, she would tell him as much. It wasn’t the right time. Humans couldn’t understand. It would only hurt them. How could he tell her that he wanted to be hurt? That he was hurting already? Greg pulled a face as he tugged on himself, squeezing the last drops of himself onto the blanket. Everything was machine-washable in the end.

“Have you seen two humans in love with each other?” he asked. “Like, really in love? So much that they didn’t want anything else but each other?”

Rose sighed deeply, and the first breeze of the day blew over their bodies. It was getting colder. Greg shuddered as Rose stroked his arms. 

“I’ve seen so many humans love each other. And it’s amazing, how they know they’re only going to be around for so long, and yet they feel satisfied with it all. As if a human lifetime could ever be enough to know somebody. Not even a hundred years, and that’s worth so much to them. It’s incredible!”

Yeah, everything’s incredible, everything’s beautiful, everything’s precious on the planet Earth, and of course Greg agreed but he still gritted his teeth. Rose was full of non-statements, and the nuance perhaps made sense to some magical ancient being but to Greg, it was starting to become trite. Was that right? No, the man had to force himself to relax. Rose could sense when he was becoming tense.

Comprehending how Rose could live for thousands of years like this was above Greg’s pay grade. Surely she had been lonely, but no, she had her Gems, and Pearl as her first lover (Even though neither one of them would outright say it). Seeing humans in love wasn’t the same as loving a human. And yet, she knew what organs to make, what sensations to create for him, how to pleasure him with her mouth and swallow without spilling a drop, how to make her nerves connect in a pleasurable way. She had learned about sex from somewhere, human sex, and she had never connected it to love. Had she? If she had, then the term ‘making love’ would blow her mind. Maybe nuance just didn’t matter when you could magically shapeshift any parts you want onto your crotch.

If ‘I love you’ hadn’t been enough for a revelation, what would be? The strangest thing was how Rose acted. She was pulling him close to her naked body right now, letting her fingers explore, like Greg had done to his first girlfriend when he thought he loved her, only to be rebuffed by her and her family when he decided to drop out. They kissed each other constantly. She appeared excited to see him whenever he came by, and she greeted him with enthusiasm and lust and hugs. Most strangely, she was sad to see him go, as if any time he left the temple would be the last time they would see each other.

Surely, that meant they had a relationship. They had to have something. Come to think of it, they had never said that they were dating. All the little things that Greg had said to Rose were about how much he loved being with her, how fantastic and beautiful she was, how she was everything he had ever wanted. All of Rose’s statements were generic, encompassing all the humans in the world, but not the specific human she was with. Unless he was misremembering. There were the moments when he joked, when he tried to make her laugh, and that was when she said he was so funny, when she looked at him like he was crazy for trying to get her attention. Maybe he was a little crazy for thinking that this could work at all.

“Hey, Rose?”

“Yes?”

“What do you like about me? I mean, you...could have any human or Gem that you wanted, but you haven’t gone out. Have you?”

“I don’t want just anyone. That was one of the hardest lessons for me to learn on Earth,” Rose murmured. “I’ve had my disagreements before, and, well, you know that’s why I’m here. But with humans… I love every individual human but leaving them, that’s hard.”

“I’ve had breakups before, too. Yeah, it all sucks. But you gotta move on, right? Until you find the one.”

Rose started to tug Greg’s hair back, making him tilt. She pulled it all between her fingers, like she was weaving. If she was doing a braid again, hopefully she had listened when he mentioned not knotting the ends. That had been a pain to undo later.

“What is ‘the one?’ Are humans really meant to find a single person, and live with them until they die? I’ve seen birds who live like that, who mate for life. But for humans, there are so many, and each one is an individual person, who experiences the world in their own way. How could you not get as many people as possible and live in harmony? Different groups get along in different ways, all together.”

“There are a few hippie communes that would definitely be down for that,” Greg mumbled. “But for lots of people, that’s — well, again, that’s just how they’re made. They’ll fall in love with someone and want to be with them and they can’t imagine loving anyone else the same way.”

“No love is the same, Greg. That’s what’s so great about love! It’s called the same thing, it’s all called love, but the way that I love the Earth is different than the way two humans would love each other. And it’s still the same word! Just the one word, love!”

Rose had been giggling, and she let herself laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all. She raised a hand to her mouth to stifle herself, not to stop the laughing but to ensure that her peals wouldn’t reach down the hill to the temple; they had made that mistake once before. 

Greg got up. The pale pink hands fell out of his hair as he rose to his feet and pushed off the blanket. All of his clothing was sitting in a neat little pile on the edge of the blanket. He could shower off tomorrow, maybe change clothes. Picking the underwear out of his jeans, Greg pulled them up onto his body without looking back.

“Greg?”

One day, he would have to scavenge for a belt. Real leather was hard to get for cheap, and a real job was far from him at the moment. The change he had left over from the tour and pitiable sales was enough to last him for a couple more months if he really stretched it out. Things were stretching out anyway, somehow, even if he didn’t eat much these days, and well, that meant that maybe a belt was unnecessary, and he would need entirely new pants. Shorts would be the most economical option. He started to step into the legs.

“Greg, are you upset? Did something happen?”

When he turned around, Greg saw Rose in all her glory standing up with him. She practically floated back upright to her full height, towering above him, above everyone. Light floated around her, as if emerging from her body itself, glowing as it covered her cleavage and flowed over her body into the shape of her dress. When the light itself faded, only the cloth remained. Greg picked up his shirt slowly as he watched the display. Try as he might, he could never understand how anyone could actually be made of light. That old physics professor of his would have a field day with the Gems.

Maybe he wasn’t in love. There were some days when he didn’t visit Rose, when he would wake up late and spend some time songwriting before wandering down the beach for a hot dog for dinner. Even on those days, he would watch the temple from the van, a distance away from it all with his guitar in his lap. Clear, bright nights were commonplace by the sea. He could see for miles in every direction, and his eyes couldn’t focus on anything else. 

Even now he was drawn back to her beauty. Rose’s hands were folded in front of her, resting just above the star on her belly and the gemstone underneath. Her gem, or the Gem that was her, whichever it was, matched her hair perfectly. It was the same pink, the same brightness, the same ethereal glow. Greg couldn’t look away. Rose couldn’t help but be beautiful. She couldn’t change her shape. Well, maybe she could, like the little Amethyst, but she evidently chose not to, and that was good enough. 

Moreover, the real question was whether or not she could change her mind. There was always a chance that she was in love and she didn’t even know it. Humans had all the examples in the world of what love looked like, and Rose was here on Earth with all the loveable humans as mere alien examples. Humans were as alien to her as she was to Greg. Then, it made no sense how she could adore him like she did, how her hands acted with such beautiful calmness, how she could kiss him and order him to make her feel good. The sex was more amazing than Greg could ever have imagined, and at the same time, it was without meaning, in a way. He had to ask her if this was going anywhere, if it meant something, or if this was just one longer fling for her in a sea of flings that she could toss over her shoulder once Greg died somehow.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, looking down at the blanket. He slipped his sandals on. “I’m just feeling weird, that’s all.”

“Weird can be good! Everything’s kind of weird —”

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s weird in its own way, but Rose, this is my specific kind of weird, my own Greg weird, emotional weird! And I...don’t know what to do with that kind of weird, I guess. Maybe it’s nothing.”

“Well, it can’t be nothing, can it?” Rose laughed. “If it was nothing, then you wouldn’t feel it, and you’re feeling it, so it has to be something, right?”

Another breeze blew in from the ocean. Being on top of the hill was nice for isolation and calming in the summer, but the nights were almost all the same. Greg slid his t-shirt on and pulled it down over his torso, trying not to shiver. The blanket would be nice tonight, unless there was another way to keep warm. Greg came back over to Rose, who moved off the blanket so he could start to fold it up. It was an old thing, but warm, and cheap, and it came in handy for all sorts of reasons.

“It’s hard to explain, and honestly, I don’t know if I want to right now,” Greg said as he shook the blanket out. 

“That’s alright! You can take all the time that you need.”

It wasn’t time that he needed, it was her. The question on the tip of his tongue wasn’t one he wanted an answer to right now, not while she was in this mood. Being rebuffed would be rough, but he could get over it. What he couldn’t come back from would be if she laughed at him one more time tonight. If he asked her to be in an honest-to-goodness relationship with him, and she laughed, then there was no coming back from it. Greg clenched his fists. The awful thing was, that was a real possibility, that she would turn it all back in his face.

Why did he love her, then? Greg shuddered once more as her hands came up behind him. Rose’s touch made him feel like he was floating, too. His hair pressed against her belly as she hugged him from behind, pulling him close and rubbing them together. The one reason he loved her that came to mind before all the complicated stuff was her body. She was massive, taller than any human could be, and she was curvy in every conceivable way from her hips to her hair, and she was soft, and patient with him. She could wait for hours. The Gems didn’t sleep, he had been told, and so Greg had to wonder what she did every night or on any day he was away. Sometimes she wasn’t even at the temple. She had so many secrets. 

He hadn’t told her everything either, to be fair. Rose had no idea that he had held someone else before, that he had kissed other humans, loved other humans, maybe even been in love. Would that stop her from loving him? What would she even think? Greg leaned into Rose with his eyes closed, letting her take his body and thoughts over. The entire basis of their relationship was a series of unknowns, two silhouettes holding hands. 

“Are you feeling tired?” she asked. 

“Kind of. I haven’t eaten much today, but I’ll last until tomorrow, I guess. Vidalia might let me crash for another bowl of cereal. I gotta pay her back some day.”

“It sounds like there’s a lot on your mind,” Rose said, laughing softly.

“Yeah,” Greg murmured. “Yeah, there is.”

He yelped as Rose swept him up, reaching down to get his legs while he was in freefall and leaning without thinking. The woman held him close again, so big that he felt like a child again. Greg blinked. He didn’t have any memories of his mother comforting him like this, or any mother for that matter. 

“Hey, Rose, do you want to come back to the van tonight?”

“What? With you?”

“Yeah!” he said. “I know that Gems don’t have to sleep, but I mean, you could try to, if you really wanted, like how Amethyst does sometimes. Hopefully with less, uh, drool.”

“Greg, I’d love to come back to the van, but the Gems need me, in case something happens,” she sighed. “They’ve been going on missions without me, and they’re doing...fine, but they need me to be there, as their leader.”

More mysteries, more frustrations. Greg had seen the Gems in action. They could lift cars and boulders, throw objects farther than any other human, shapeshift and transform and do things that were literally impossible. But Rose still felt like they needed her. Maybe it was guilt, or maybe she had something else she was keeping, a power she couldn’t talk about. There were lots of powers that she couldn’t talk about, it seemed.

The man straightened up as much as he could, wriggling until he could rest a hand on the woman’s chest. Stroking with his left fingers, he traced his nails up to her chin, then to her lips, placing one finger on their softness and pressing so gently. Her eyes were wide as they stared at each other, and Greg couldn’t help but grin. She was enamored with his attempts at romance as if he was actually smooth, as if he was anything but a deadbeat dropout musician who had left it all behind. She was the one thing he couldn’t leave, it seemed, and she loved him for it, in her own way. Maybe it was about love languages, finding out what she meant in her motions.

And she would laugh at those thoughts all the same. She wouldn’t understand what a love language was beyond another use of that word, love, another muddling in its meaning turning to meaninglessness in her head. Greg kept up his fragile smile. One day, maybe he could ask her to be in a relationship without fear. The more he thought about her, the more he was afraid. She acted as if she would never leave him, but she had nowhere to go. Did she?

“You can tell them that we were on a mission of our own,” Greg said, raising an eyebrow.

“A mission to the back of your van?”

“Filled with danger, and cuddles. Danger cuddles!”

And there, another laugh, stifled for fear of alerting the other aliens down below, if they were even listening. Rose held Greg in her arms before looking forward, taking a few steps, and leaping into the air. She launched herself over the hill and town before Greg even had a chance to scream. He closed his eyes as his lover’s chuckles echoed in his ears over the pounding blood. Air rushed past them, blowing through his hair, her curls, whipping around his sandals. One shoe flew off into oblivion, making Greg curl his toes as he imagined it hitting the ground. Everything was colder up here. If Rose could fly, he knew she would take him anywhere, above the safety of the Earth, far above where he could survive if he fell.

_ Don’t look down. Don’t look. _

**Author's Note:**

> Rose Quartz remains THE most difficult character I have ever written by far. She's challenging in ways I couldn't have imagined. I'll go so far as to say that this was one of the most difficult stories I've written period. Very hard, very worthwhile, and I'm pleased with the results!


End file.
